Moosh and I thought it might be fun to post some development diaries, so this is going to be the first of a series of posts talking about the development of Stellar Seas, especially in regards to lore and worldbuilding. I'm planning on ultimately discussing the geography, the cultures, the characters, and the story, as well as probably a misc post to describe stuff that didn't fit anywhere else. I'll be putting together a table of contents for these in the opening post. I'm also going to be using spoiler tags, as this is quite the large post and does contain spoilers if you haven't beaten the quest yet. Now, without further ado...
As is probably obvious from the naming scheme of the islands, the world of Stellar Seas takes great inspiration from both Hawaii and the Polynesian islands in general. I wanted to go island by island and talk about the inspiration, the design process, and other random trivia.
Omaka
Omaka's name is derived from the Hawaiian word for "start". Yes, starting island. Highly original. The island itself is loosely based upon the Hawaiian island of Oahu, with Pala Bay serving a similar function as Honolulu: A capital city, built in recent times on formerly wild land (Skai comments on how there was hardly a town there two generations ago), which has little history as a capital city but became the de facto capital due to its use as a port for international trade. Moosh and I had decided we didn't want our protagonist to be from the big city, but also didn't want him to be a country bumpkin awed at his first site of a large city he sails to, as is common in many story like this, hence why we started Asher in the tiny Puna Village on the northern shore of Omaka.
Puna and Pala, in case you were wondering, were names chosen at random, not with any Hawaiian meaning in mind, though I've since learned that Puna can refer to a spring, which is oddly fitting given the pool of water in the village. The music for both towns came from Pokemon Sun and Moon; I really liked how they had the same melody, and songs with a day/night version were a must. Half of me wanted to use Route 1 from that game for Omaka path, as it also uses the same melody, but it really didn't fit the vibe I was going for, prompting me to use the overworld theme from Chrono Cross instead. Take note: This will be far from the last time you see music from those two games here.
As this was the first island we made, it's definitely got some early-installment weirdness going on. In particular, Moosh and I initially had planned for secrets to be hidden in a much more Yuurand-esque style, hence the walk-through tree north of Pala and maze of boxes in Pala. The existence of Selet's Manor on this island is also another bit of early-installment weirdness; in the initial draft, this quest only had four islands, so we had to squeeze everything we could from those four. My how far we've come... While I worked on Puna Village and Omaka Path, Moosh did Pala Bay mostly by himself, placing buildings and decorating the interiors and leaving me to place NPCs that fit. I'd like think I did a decent job with that.
Moosh's thoughts:
"Pala Bay was inspired by Termina in Chrono Cross, which I'm assuming was inspired in turn by the island of Santorini. The area didn't come out looking quite like I envisioned it in part because I wasn't confident with wrangling DoR palettes, in part because that much white wouldn't look great in a 2D game, and also in part because damn those castle tiles gave me a nightmare and a half and I had to made multiple edits just to get the simplest layout functional. I'm still fairly happy with the final product though."
Kawi
Kawi is somewhat loosely based on the Hawaiian island of Kaho'olawe, a desert island off the coast of Maui. The real-life Kaho'olawe is caught in the rain shadow of Maui's massive volcano, leading to the arid conditions. While this explanation is given for Kawi as well (being caught in Mauna Ali'i's rain shadow), if you study the map carefully, you might notice this makes no sense; the trade winds in Stellar Sea's world blow from the northwest to the southeast, so there's no way this island should be caught in a rain shadow. This bothered me a little bit, but we ultimately decided it was more important for gameplay purposes to place it next to Omaka. This way, it would be the first island the player sees, while the name of the destination is still fresh in their mind, allowing them to decide for themselves whether to advance the plot or go explore first.
From a gameplay perspective, the canyon was somewhat tricky to design. To my knowledge, no quests have done steep elevation (be it mountains or canyons) explored mostly from the sides before, as ZC's perspective tends to favor ladders going from the bottom of the screen to the top. We have to make some new tiles for ramps and stairs going diagonally down the sides of the canyon, but I'm ultimately pretty happy with how it turned out.
The music here is Drowned Valley, also from Chrono Cross. Like I said, you'll be seeing lots of that.
Starfall Shoals
This is the largest of Moosh's overworld areas, and in my opinion, one of the best areas in the quest. While he had no particular real world area in mind while making, I decided, after the fact, that it looked a lot like the remains of Krakatoa, and we agreed this seemed fitting enough. As the Hawaiian Islands are a chain of volcanoes, moving from oldest to newest, we placed this newest volcanic island at the tip of the chain from by Kohiko-Omaka-Kawi-Wahiokala-Shoals.
Moving into more technical discussion, this area looks a bit hideous in the editor, as Moosh had to use a script to combine the shallow water and shoal tiles and create the wave effects. Looking at it in ZQuest yields this. In my opinion, it's a miracle the area came out so beautiful being built this way.
The music here is actually from a postgame dungeon in the Ys series. An unconventional choice for an overworld area, perhaps, but I think it fits wonderfully.
Moosh's thoughts:
"This area started out as an idea I'd suggested for Web of Lucidity. Came out a little different but the idea of this long land bridge crossing the ocean with waves (I think it was rising and lowering tides in the original plan) that push you off off was all there. Originally the island with the mines was going to be an active volcano but I toned that back as I developed the tone of the rest of the area. I think this is still my favorite area I made."
Wahiokala
The island's name is derived from the name of an actual volcano on Maui, Haleakala, meaning "House of the sun". The edits made to the name render it instead as something akin to "Place of the sun". This island, easily the largest in the quest, is based on the islands of Maui and Hawaii (aka "The Big Island"). The massive Mauna Ali'i (meaning Mount Chief) is an amalgamation of the real like Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa (both on the Big Island) and Haleakala (on Maui). The jungles on the western side are based off the jungles of Kohala on the Big Island's northern shore and the jungles on the northwest flank of Maui. The lava flows, to the surprise of no one, are based of Kilauea, Hawaii's actively erupting volcano.
Mauna Ali'i received a disproportionate amount of care compared to other locales. It's hard to stress just how big Mauna Kea is (I mean, just look at how massive it looks, then take into account the slopes rise very gently and there's an optical illusion making it look smaller than it actually is), and I wanted to do justice the myriad ecosystems that line its slopes. The middle elevations on Mauna Kea are home to grasslands and forests of false sandalwood and mamane trees. While I couldn't really sprite these specific trees, I did opt to use a unique sprite for the trees here and tried to capture the sense of a sparse forest high above the clouds.
The upper levels of Mauna Kea are above the treeline and, formerly, were home to a unique plant known as the Mauna Kea Silversword, now critically endangered due to browsing from human-introduced sheep. This plant has always fascinated me, and I all but demanded Moosh sprite it, despite his objections that it gave him the heeby-jeebies. Nauma's discussion of the silverswords has a great deal of parallels to real life here.
The summit itself is often snowcapped and is covered in volcanic cratersvolcanic craters[/url], a look I tried to capture to the extent possible with these cliff formations. I'm not sure if the idea actually came across, but I'm still happy with them. Finally, the massive observatories on the summit were, unsurprisingly, the inspiration, in part, at least, for the final dungeon.
Whew... that was a lot of talking about a mountain. Moving on...
The name Hoku means star. Probably an uninspired name for a village of astronomers, but ah well. Hoku Village came pretty late in development, and so it may be apparent that the path there from the volcano was something of an afterthought. I'd rather have had a path coming down from the mountain base, but the overworld was already made, and I had to work with what I had. The village itself proved a little difficult to make - Moosh and I pitched several ideas, including having it in the highlands, on a hill overlooking the sea, or partially covered by rocky overhangs, but the tileset fought all of these decisions. Ultimately, we decided for cliffs above the water with spires sticking from the see connected by bridges. This was only partially accomplished (tileset woes again), but ah well.
The interiors on Hoku Island, like the vast majority of house interiors in the quest, are Moosh's work. Most of the tiles were ripped from Chrono Trigger, then edited to varying degrees. The banners hanging from the wall are completely original. Moosh also edited the Mammon Machine symbol to get something resembling the Cosmic Egg. Did you notice the Egg appears on the tablecloths, bedspreads, and banners? The more you know...
As I mentioned before, the original plan for the quest called for only four islands. As a result, Wahiokala ended up rather large and challenging, its size inflated somewhat out of scale to compensate for the relatively small world. In that original draft, two keys were required to reach the path to Mauna Ali'i's summit. This idea was scrapped, yet my overworld led to two otherwise dead end screens. As a result, Laverne's and Truf's sidequests were devised as a way of making use of those screens. The more you know...
Finding music that fit for this island was difficult, as the way caves work meant the same theme had to be used for jungle, mountain base, and lava flows. Ultimately, the jungle theme from Kingdom Hearts managed to fit the tone of all three. Hoku Village's theme is Seafolk Village from Pokemon Sun/Moon; this theme, especially the nighttime version, captured a certain serenity and sense that the adventure was reaching its final stage that I felt was absolutely essential. Mauna Ali'i's theme is also from Sun/Moon, being the Lanikala theme. Tired of the Sun/Moon music yet?
Kohiko
Perhaps the least creatively named of the islands, Kohiko comes from the Hawaiian word for "old", kahiko. This island was inspired by the oldest and most weathered of the main Hawaiian islands, Kauai, and especially, Waimea Canyon. The real-likfe Waimea canyon has been carved over time by streams pouring from the summit of Mount Waiʻaleʻale, a summit cloaked in almost perpetual cloud cover and rainfall. The canyon terminates in the so-called Wall of Tears, an array of waterfalls streaming down the eroded caldera of the mountain which I tried, somewhat unimpressively, to translate to the small screen. The lake at the summit of Mauna Poho is based on Lake Wai'ale'ale, one of Hawaii's only lakes. As in our game, it is covered in perpetual mists. Unlike in our game, no ancient temples lie hidden under the lake.
You may recognize the music in Kohi Canyon as the theme of the Vast Poni Canyon from Pokemon Sun/Moon. As it so happens, that area is also based on Waimea Canyon (and the island in general on Kauai), though it took a pretty different spin on the subject matter. Nonetheless, I loved the song, and the shared real-world inspiration seemed like a fitting enough excuse to use it.
Diving back into weeds again, I want to talk briefly about the ruined city portion of the canyon, as this was one of the most technically challenging areas in the whole quest to make. It's an unholy fusion of Moosh's elevation system and his tent script, used in ways they were never meant to be used. The process for setting them up required building most of the outside screen on layer 2, with the inside screen on layer 0, as you can see here and here, and then using flags on layer 4 to denote upper elevation and lower elevation, as you will only appear inside if stepping in the square region AND on the lower elevation. This also required creatively setting up the screen to ensure you couldn't step on the "upper" flags while inside, or step on the "inner" flags while outside. I'm really happy with the effect, but it was a lot of work for something the average player hopefully won't think about.
This island, incidentally, was the last major island to be made. As I've alluded to before, it and its dungeon were not included in the original draft of the game, and were one of the final major projects to be completed before release (I'll take more about the story behind this later). Despite being such a late addition, I think it may be my favorite overworld area I made for the quest (the canyon itself, that is; Moosh made the upper lake area). It's visually striking, using a careful mix of foliage unique to the area, and does fun stuff with over-unders to squeeze every last drop of usefulness out of the quest's major items and mechanics I could manage to present a (I hope) suitably impressive fakeout final area.
Okay... that was A LOT about the major islands. Should have a lot less to say about the minor islands.
Kikala Hill
This island stems entirely from me nerding out about botony, specifically the genus Araucaria, pine trees of the southern hemisphere, such as the New Caledonia pine or the Norfolk Island pine. Unfortunately, Moosh and I proved not up for the task of spriting these magnificent trees, so I resorted to using fir trees Jupiter had ripped ages ago. While I wasn't able to get my pines, I did let images of Norfolk Island inspire the appearance of the island. This was the first of the optional islands, an idea I'd had kicking around even while the quest was in its only-four-islands phase of development. The word Kikala is Hawaiian for pine or fir trees.
Kawaihae Cave
The name Kawaihae roughly means whispering sea. I'd wanted to do a sea cave, partially because I wanted to use the music track here (another Sun/Moon song; I love this soundtrack), for a while. I knew I wanted the cave accessible early, but not fully explorable til late game, so I figured the Stellar Golem was a good fit for here. Kinda forgot that it'd need an unobstructed view of the sky to function fully, but the light streaming from holes in the sky was planned for the arena anyways, so, uh... it works? Moosh and I also had a fun discussion of whether this area is an overworld area or a minidungeon. I'd argue the former, he'd argue the latter. It's fun bucking conventions.
Kukulu Cliffs
So the only reason this island exists is because I drew it on the overworld sailing map to make Kawaihae Cave more interesting and Moosh became enthralled with the idea, ultimately making an overworld area for it. The pirate base here was his idea as well; my initial plan for the sidequest involved a minidungeon in the ship, but I much prefer how this ultimately turned out.
Carn Ruins
The original conception for this island was very small scale, basically just being an arena for the Fusion Golem. Over time, the scope naturally expanded, and I'm quite glad for that. The puzzles here used multiple items together in new and fun ways, and that's ultimately the kind of thing I live for. The music, again, is from Sun/Moon; as it shares a motif with the song we used for the Golem battle, it felt appropriate.
Malka
This is another village that wasn't in the initial draft of the game, but that I'm very glad made the final cut. The aesthetics for the area borrow quite heavily from those I'd planned for Mato's home village of Adarig in Web of Lucidity, with some adjustments here and there. I'd planned at one point to do more with the undersides of the stilted houses, but the script, at that time, didn't allow for it. The music here is the theme of Guldove from Chrono Cross, with the Home World and Another World versions being used for day and night respectively - the two songs fit the day/night theme quite well, and it felt like a fun nod to a character that partially inspired Torrin's design (more on that later).
As with most house interiors, these were made by Moosh. The interior walls are custom, with Moosh studying these tiles from Romancing SaGa 3 and redrawing them in a new perspective (the floors and bedmats are a direct rip). The outside roof tiles were based on these as well, albeit complete redrawn to resemble the palm fronds from trees used in this quest.
As a last note, making the transparency here look decent was... a struggle, due to the way ZC handles transparency. Never again, ZC palettes. Never again.
Lepai's Lookout
This is one of those islands that arose because Moosh was bored one night and churned out an entire small island. This... was actually a fairly common occurrence with us throughout development. This was the first large scale use of Moosh's tent script, which was originally made for a single tent in Pala Bay. His desire to use this script more partially led to this island's existence. As is Moosh tradition, the music is Ys in origin. The name of the island is a microcosm for the way Moosh and I do worldbuilding. Moosh initially just had it named "Tent Island" and asked me to come up with something better. Looking at the shape of the island, I named it "Lepai's Lookout", having no idea who Lepai was. Moosh, in turn, wrote the backstory for the island, inspired by the name. It's a fun cycle of creativity all around.
Moosh's thoughts:
"The large cliff along the east side of the map was partially repurposed from my original plan for Hoku. Some combination of that and the pirate cove in Kukulu Cliffs would be how that idea would've turned out"
Mirage Island
Hey, speaking of islands Moosh churned out in one night. The idea hit him, and so he made it. We both really liked the idea of an island that only appears sometimes and might be completely overlooked by the player, and overlooked it was. We're actually kind of surprised by the obscure secrets people found before uncovering this place. The music here's also from Chrono Cross - it's the forest theme from that game.
Tombol Reef
At one point, there were going to be numerous small islands with a single hymnstone on them; by the end of the game, we only had two hymnstones left to place. The idea isn't exactly a unique one, but Assassin's Creed IV is the game I was probably channeling the most when designing these small islands. They felt just the right size to have a fun puzzle and make the world seem like a bigger place while not requiring all that much work. The name Tombol is meaningless, just a fun spattering of syllables. The music used here, and in all other small islands, is the nighttime ocean theme from Xenoblade X.
The Three Brothers
There's really not a whole lot to say about this one that wasn't said about Tombol Reef. The name itself was inspired by various rock formations, such as The Twelve Apostoles of Victoria, Australia, where groups of rocks are anthropomorphized. Looking at the three rock formations on this small island, I liked to think of them as three brothers, standing and looking over the waves together, arms interlocked (though one of the natural bridges that gave the formation its name has since collapsed, requiring the use of the tidal gauntlet to navigate the area).
Tel's Pyramid
I can't really take credit for the cool name or appearance of this place; it's heavily inspired by Ball's Pyramid, the eroded remains of a volcano off the coast of Lord Howe Island. Like the version in our game, this rock formation is very difficult to approach due to dangerous currents. Unlike ours, there are no torches to track the cycle of ghosts, though there are the last known wild population of the Lord Howe Island stick insect.
Boiling Spring
This was actually the very last island to be made in the quest, and was made in the week prior to launch. The position near Starfall Shoals, southeast of Wahiokala, was intended to suggest that it's the slowly developing newest island in the volcanic chain, making it similar to the Loihi Seamount off the coast of Hawaii (which I recently learned has been renamed the Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount. Say that 10 times fast).
Waypoint Island
Moosh's thoughts:
"Waypoint Island doesn't really have a story behind it, though in my initial plan for the Chase sidequest it was just a tiny one screen island that would've had a wooden sign on it placed by Chase, directing you to Mt. Silver. I got a bit fancier when we added the hymnstone check."
Mt Silver
Is this place an island, or a dungeon? Yes on both counts? Moosh became enamored with the idea of making a mountainous bonus dungeon after I scrapped the idea of using this area's theme (Mt. Coronet from Pokemon Diamond/Pearl) for Mauna Ali'i. The name is, unsurprisingly, a reference to the postgame mountain dungeon of Pokemon Gold and Silver. We had intended to change it in development, with Mt Silver being a placeholder name, but by the end we'd grown attached to it. The original idea was for this island to be off the southern edge of the map, as these islands are in the southern hemisphere and Mt Silver, with its cold climate, should naturally be far, far to the south, but Moosh moved it to the east to tie it to the sunrise, thus ruining the entire climate system of this world. How dare people let storytelling get in the way of accurate weather patterns in worldbuilding?
Moosh's thoughts:
"Mt. Silver was very inspired by the one from Pokemon. When Evan pitched the idea for the Horizon boss fight I need it had to be set on top of a mountain with a sky backdrop. At one point we almost used the stellar pillar screen on Mauna Ali'i, but it wasn't the right shape and I felt up to making a bonus dungeon instead. So now we have a bonus dungeon set on a snowy mountain with a boy at the top who says "..." and then gives you cursed RNG that ends your run? Sounds about right. It would've been fitting to call this place Haleakala. Shame the name was already taken."
